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Too melodic to qualify as Ambient, too textural for Jazz, too familiar for the Avant-Garde, too contemporary to be considered Classical, too solemn for New Age and too deliberate to be wholely spacemusic, From the Dark Earth by Meg Bowles easily exceeds the sum of its influences. Present are Bowles' rich synthesizer tones which slowly shift from hues of blue to gray as are sparse percussion samples that provide a sense of motion across darkened lands. But what brings this album into focus is the use of the trumpet soloist, an idea never fully investigated on an album of EM until now. On every track, trumpeter David Bilger's playing is suported by and comingled with Bowles' earthy synth textures and evokes emotions somewhere between Copeland's Quiet City and Isham's Romeo Is Bleeding. The nine tracks on From The Dark Earth play out almost like the chapters of an old diary, each composition building on the one prior, until, at close, the listener achieves a sense of knowing the author and an understanding of their experience.
- Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END |
